Peppermint 9 review

Peppermint 9: June 2018

A new Peppermint release is always welcome; we've all been at this for a while now.

I began my linux adventure with Linux Mint Bianca [back in February 2007] and dual-booted with Peppermint Ice [2010 https://www.geek.com/…/peppermint-ice-a-faster-lighter-clo…/]... now we're up to Peppermint 9. Great stuff.

Is it any good?

Well, yes, it is. It's fast, lightweight, reliable, and (so far) works straight from the box. I haven't yet found a problem with this release (3 days now) but there will always be something to fix when you're updating distros. Which, paradoxically, is actually another advantage of Peppermint and its big daddy, Mint, on which it's based (Mint, in turn, is based on Ubuntu). Linux is all about community and sharing, so there's a large, worldwide, usually friendly and helpful bunch of people willing to help if you have a problem and are prepared to ask.

I use my distros for lots of things, like most people and, like most people, I have my favourite programs so there's always a bit of setting-up that needs to be done with any new installation. I'm a novelist, editor and musician so I always add programs like Mixxx, Calibre and Sigil, SoundConverter, Handbrake and FocusWriter to whatever is already there. I did that, installed and ran the programs, and everything was and still is hunky dory. Using Mixxx I created a new smooth jazz mix for Mixcloud; with Calibre I turned an epub into a mobi [I'll tweak it with Sigil]; with Handbrake I converted an old DVD movie into an mkv file; and I wrote the first draft of this article using FocusWriter.

As you can see from this screenshot, connecting to the net and downloading from the repos was straightforward; the connection was strong and fast.

Peppermint differs from Mint in more ways than one. It's not, and never was intended as, a cut-down version; no, Peppermint was conceived as a cloud hub back in the early days of big data and the promise of cloud computing. Originally the OS was called Ice after the little site-specific cloud apps that are Peppermint's characteristic feature.

An Ice dialog. This is where you add the URL for your SSB app. Once set up you will see your app listed in the menu.

Cloud Apps

Peppermint comes pre-loaded with useful cloud apps like Google's Drive, Calendar, and Mail; Microsoft's online suite of Office tools, including Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Skype; graphic editing is handled by Pixlr, etc. Obviously the included apps are only a suggestion and because Peppermint is based on Mint, based on Ubuntu, based on Debian, etc there's an incredible wealth of free software available for download. With Peppermint, customisation is only limited by your imagination and skill.

Verdict

Peppermint 9 is a winner.

A highly-recommended instalment in an ongoing series, it can do most of what you want with considerable ease.

{Ken Rowley}

Peppermint 3 has arrived!

Finally, Peppermint 3 OS has arrived... it's what I'm using right now and so far, so good. It's built upon Lubuntu and Mint and looks and feels great (I'm not a fan of the new Ubuntu desktop at all). I've installed it on an old 256 RAM machine, but everything is working at the moment and I particularly like the fact that this Peppermint is not overloaded with programs I won't use. Since the early days of the Mac I've really enjoyed customising what I'm using and Peppermint 3 gives me that option from the get-go.

After 3 days, Peppermint 3 is still working really well. I had the usual odd window behaviour as with Peppermints 1, 2 and Ice, but that was easily fixed.

aDeskbar!

my desktop with aDeskbar on the right

I should have posted this earlier, but... well, anyway. aDeskbar is a perfect solution for those of us who are really Mac users but have migrated to linux for whatever reason (I use linux at work mostly). As you can see from the screenshot it can sit anywhere you want it to, it can autohide, and it works seamlessly and trouble-free with the lightweight distros out there (in this case, Peppermint-ice). If you are interested, read the original post on OMGubuntu and download the deb file by following the links. I'm finding aDeskbar a valuable utility at the moment. Enjoy. The link:

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/11/adeskbar-dock-panel-replacement-for-ubuntu/

A quick meerkat (Lubuntu 10.10)

As you know, I'm using a minimum-ram laptop at work so the full-blown-bells-and-whistles (read bloated) OS-es are not really an option for me right now, especially as it's the desktop environment that typically hogs the available RAM.

Peppermint's two flavours -- Standard and Ice -- are great, as is Jolicloud 1.0. To these I can now add Light Ubuntu (Lubuntu). Lubuntu is another LXDE environment (the Peppermints are too) with Openbox but the newest release is built upon Ubuntu's meerkat (10.10) whereas the Peppermints are using lucid (10.04).

Lubuntu 10.10 is fast, attractive, and pretty much ideal once you've installed it and added a few tweaks. Since I always use more than one partition on my machines, I encountered a GRUB problem after installing Lubuntu in that I could access other OS-es but not boot from them. The problem was that Lubuntu doesn't install osprober so the startup sequence doesn't see the other partitions. The way to fix this is simple, however. Open a terminal, type

sudo apt-get install os-prober then
update-grub

and the other systems will be available to select from at the next reboot.

The other tweak is to download a new lubuntu add-on, lubuntu-control-center_0.2_all.deb which is available from the web: http://www.mediafire.com/?3kyy21ubztiki0c. This gives you a gui that you can use to modify much of lubuntu's interface.


But there's more:

If you like Peppermint Ice's respin cursors, you can get them from synaptic -- search for dmz-cursors, download and restart.

An easy way to get a terminal is to add (again through synaptic) a little app called guake, which allows you to utilise F12 for this purpose. I've found it very handy.

There's no need for Peppermint's Ice web-app creator, since Lubuntu comes with Chromium as default and you can create your own web-apps by going to a site with the browser, selecting tools, create application shortcuts, and saving the new app directly into your Applications menu.

And, of course, if you choose to add Firefox (not installed with Lubuntu) remember to add my Sifundzani1 Firefox Persona!

Overall, I like the new Lubuntu; and I think its menu behaviour is actually better than Peppermint's at this point. It's also of course very fast.

Ruby Shoes!

Everyone knows of course (or should!) about Dorothy's famous ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz:

they are justly iconic.








But have you seen this icon before?

These are also ruby shoes! 

Let me explain. From time-to-time I do some coding/programming, since I began using computers in the days when computers came with built-in programming languages; in those far-off days the only way you could have a program is if you wrote one (my first computer was a ZX-80, R50 at the time from South Africa). The languages I learnt back then were BASIC, LOGO, and PASCAL. Later on, I actually posted a few programs online for Mac OS 7,8, and 9. 

Well, recently I've been tinkering with PYTHON and RUBY. RUBY... aha! RUBY is quite special I think.

It got me considering how I might be able to teach some RUBY at school to the students. Surfing the net I came across SHOES, which is a mini-GUI kit for RUBY. When students start learning something they want to see quick results, and SHOES certainly provides quick results. Like RUBY itself beginners can see results from the get-go. I think it might be what educators are looking for. And it's not even difficult to get hold of. It's already in the Ubuntu/Mint/Peppermint repositories, works as call-to app, and (obviously) runs on ruby. More on this next week...

Peppermint outruns Meerkat

Well, I've been using Maverick for some four days or so, and I definitely like it, but these standard Ubuntu distros are becoming more and more RAM heavy. A lot of the time I'm using a laptop that only has about 200 MB of RAM, so after a while Meerkat begins to crawl. That's when I logout and fire up Peppermint which is like a breath of fresh air... however, I've installed the new UBUNTU font on Peppermint, so it's not as if the Meerkat hasn't changed my user experience! :)

Btw, there's no need to install Ice to get web-apps any more: I notice Chromium has a command dedicated to this in its Tools menu.

Maverick Meerkat 10.10.10 has arrived!

Well, Maverick has finally arrived (Ubuntu 10.10). I've been running the Release Candidate for the last 24 hours and it works fine so far. Cardapio is installed and still cool, Swiftfox is still speedy, and K3b is still the best CD/DVD writer ever! My other favourite apps are also fine.

Visually, Maverick hasn't changed much but from the activity I've seen going on doing the installation and updates, there's been a lot of changes under the hood. Next week--after the official release--I'll see if I can install and run SchoolTool on this newbie. Should be fine though.

Lush-Cardapio-Ice Desktop

Here's a grab of my current desktop, showing the Ubuntu Lush theme, the new Cardapio menu applet, and the use of Ice web-apps:

The drop-down menu at the top-left is Cardapio, and everything is in there; it's like a KDE or Mint Menu; then there are dedicated Ice-made web-apps for Facebook, Gmail, Yahoo mail, this blog, and my 4shared page. At the top right pidgin is inside the envelope and there's also a green button (not shown in the grab) that says that I'm available (online) through Mxit. For me, this is all very Mac OS 7-9, my favourite desktop era. This is all Ubuntu/Peppermint though, not Mac.

Lush is available through synaptic (in a collection of gnome-2 themes); Ice is available by adding the following ppa and then checking Ice in synaptic:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kendalltweaver/peppermint

Cardapio also needs the ppa added:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cardapio-team/unstable

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install cardapio

Radiance (Ubuntu) theme

Here's a screenshot of one of my laptops with the Radiance theme installed. I think it looks way cool. (I'm actually running Linux Mint Isadora, but of course Mint is built upon Ubuntu.) If you like it too, it's available through synaptic: just search for radiance...

Jolicloud 1.0 Final verdict!

Well, I must say I'm impressed. On my Samsung NC10, Jolicloud 1.0 reigns supreme. By comparison, Windows 7 runs like it's moving through molasses, and the snappy i-phone, i-pod, i-pad, i-everything interface works well and also looks way cool on my blue netbook. The only rela gripe I have is disappointment that I can't get the Jolicloud OS to load onto a regular laptop :(

Jolicloud 1.0

Well, I updated to Jolicloud 1.0 today and so far so good. I do like the uncluttered interface, although it's quite a bit different from the pre-release final version. As with all new things it will take a while to get used to and I think I'll need to play with this latest version for a day or two before I can say whether it will challenge Peppermint for me or not.

And I'm also keen to download an iso of the new OS to install on a laptop to see if it runs well there too... like many users I work on a variety of machines and I like compatibility.

Ice Ice Baby! (Peppermint Ice)

Ubuntu -- Linux Mint -- Peppermint -- Jolicloud -- Peppermint Ice: it's becoming quite a family. This blog post is being written and posted using Peppermint Ice OS, which is the newest baby in this lineage (only a few days old at this point). It's fast, so far stable, and different from Peppermint (no ice) mainly in that it uses Google's Chromium browser and elements rather than Mozilla's Firefox and Prism to create browser-based applets.

The change might be significant. Jolicloud started out by using Mozilla and Prism, then switched to Chromium; Peppermint also began with Prism... and now Ice has arrived, using Chromium.

More on this after a day or two.

Peppermint vs Jolicloud

Ok, I've been trying out these two implementations of a Cloud-based OS, and I like them both. It's amazing how quickly my thinking has adjusted to their different designs. My verdict right now is to use Peppermint for laptops and Jolicloud for networks--but that decision is based primarily on the fact that I can't get Jolicloud to install on anything other than my Samsung NC10, where it works just fine.

Both use online suites of apps-- Google's; and, in Jolicloud's case, Adobe's air.

They differ in interface design and underlying technologies.

Both are built on Ubuntu, but Jolicloud looks more like an iPhone desktop than Ubuntu. Peppermint looks like Linux Mint. Rather than a browser, dedicated panes are used to run web applications: Peppermint uses Mozilla's Prism; Jolicloud uses Google's Chrome.

I have had no problems at all so far with either system (although I'm using the Peppermint respin rather than the initial buggy offering).

Which will be the winner? probably something else entirely, but these are showing the way to go. Recommended.